JAZZ HANDS

A new watch col­lec­tion from Vacheron Con­stantin riffs on a vin­tage clas­sic

The 1950s was the decade of jazz and coun­ter­cul­ture, Miles Davis and Al­dous Hux­ley, and the mak­ing of a watch clas­sic. De­signed in 1956, Swiss man­u­fac­ture Vacheron Con­stantin’s Ref­er­ence 6073 dress watch came equipped with an au­to­matic, self-wind­ing move­ment. It had a wa­ter-re­sis­tant con­struc­tion and a distinctively crafted case with el­e­gantly in­te­grated lugs that re­sem­bled the arms of a Mal­tese cross. Some 62 years later, the Mal­tese em­blem ap­pears on the dial, crown and move­ment of a new Vacheron Con­stantin col­lec­tion, the Fiftysix. Tak­ing their cues from the Ref­er­ence 6073, the watches in the col­lec­tion, each avail­able in an 18ct pink gold or stain­less steel case, sport a mod­ern, cos­mopoli­tan de­sign with hand­some, mid­cen­tury-in­spired de­tail­ing: di­als fea­ture a dou­ble opa­li­ne­sun­burst ef­fect, there is a lu­mi­nes­cent coat­ing on the ba­ton-type hands, and the Mis­sis­sippi al­li­ga­tor strap has a half-mal­tese-crossshaped buckle. A pol­ished, satin-brushed 22ct open­worked ro­tor, with a frosted-snailed fin­ish and a Mal­tese cross ap­pliqué, de­fines the col­lec­tion’s sig­na­ture look. Cool, as Miles liked to say.